Witches of East End's Rachel Boston on Ingrid's Power-ful Struggle and a Deadly Twist Ahead

Witches of East End‘s reluctantly witchy Ingrid very well may be the Lifetime drama’s most powerful sorceress of all — but Rachel Boston‘s ambivalent alter ego isn’t ready to take on that title… yet.

“Ingrid keeps taking one step into this world, and then she wants to hide in a library and go back to her old life,” Boston tells TVLine with a laugh.

“That’s the whole first season,” she continues. “Ingrid is seeing what this all feels like, and then when she realizes she might be the most powerful of all, she tries to get her head around what she wants to do with it: How can she use it for good? How can she help her family, her community, and then everyone around her?”

Read on as Boston further previews Ingrid’s foray into the supernatural — which includes the death of someone she loves as the result of a dangerous resurrection spell. Speaking of, you won’t have to wait long to find out who’s on the chopping block: The actress reveals that the doomed one’s identity will be revealed in this Sunday’s installment (airing at 10/9c).

TVLINE | The chemistry among you, Jenna Dewan-Tatum, Madchen Amick and Julia Ormond is so lovely and really sets this show apart. Was that connection and camaraderie instantaneous?
I met Jenna at the final reading, and I just walked in the door and we hugged for 10 minutes. It’s like, “I know you. How do I know you?” [Laughs] It was just instant, our connection. I felt like she had been my sister for a thousand years, and that was such a blessing to have going into the pilot, and it’s evolved along the way… Now we have a precious baby in the trailer. It’s become family. We’ve all been through a lot together since the pilot, but with Jenna and I it was an immediate connection. We treat each other like sisters now — and neither of us have sisters, so it’s become a really special relationship.

TVLINE | Ingrid still seems pretty reluctant to embrace her witchy powers. Will we see her come around anytime soon?
In the first few episodes, you see her doing everything in her power to try to reverse something that she’s done that is going to take the life of someone she loves. It’s a huge wake-up call to her. But through this experience with her family, she is able to see how she can use [magic] for good, and that’s the direction where she is going to take it.

TVLINE | We know that Ingrid bringing Wendy back to life means that someone she loves will have to die. How quickly will we see that come to fruition?
You find out Sunday!… [Laughs] It’s so sad, but you do find out a lot about the responsibility that Ingrid is going to take on for herself, too. It’s an interesting experience for a human to deal with any form of pain, but for a woman who has supernatural powers, how do you deal with grief? How do you deal with processing what it is to be moving into this new realm, and then also have the same human emotions you had before you learned how different your life is?

TVLINE | Does that mean that someone is actually going to die this week?
You start to see who’s going to be on the other end of the curse.

TVLINE | So far, we’ve seen that Ingrid and Freya are very powerful, they just don’t quite know it. Will they soon be able to hone their gifts?
It’s one step forward, one step back… That’s why it’s been so fun to play Ingrid. My favorite part is to start with a woman who is so comfortable living this quiet life in a small town, and her journey is just beginning because she doesn’t want to live in this [new] world… Ingrid takes one step in, and then she wants to hide in a library and go back to her old life.

TVLINE | Most of these women have skeletons in their closets from lives past. Can the same be assumed for Ingrid?
She definitely does! That’s one of my favorite lines of the show, when the whole family sitting around the table in the first episode after the pilot. I say to Joanna, “You don’t even kill spiders! Why does someone want to hurt you?” And [Wendy’s] like, “Your mother’s a badass.” [Laughs] We don’t know how we have been living the life that our mother set up for us, so we aren’t aware of the huge journeys that we’ve been on together, through different time periods, where we were very powerful witches. It’s inherently inside of us — the intuition’s still there and all of those memories exist inside our hearts and souls — but now we have to put it into action.

TVLINE | How successful will Wendy and Joanna be in keeping Ingrid and Freya in the dark about their impending mortality?
They won’t learn about it immediately… I think it’s almost too much for Ingrid to process at this point. She needs some time to figure out what that might be. It’s just too much, but you will start to see, as we go back into the past, that it’s not something our mother wants us to know either, so we can live fully present in this lifetime.

TVLINE | And obviously we have to talk about Ingrid finally making a move on Jason George’s has-to-be-too-good-to-be-true Adam…
I love Jason so much! He is such an amazing person and actor… This is a man who comes into Ingrid’s life, who she’s known since she was a little girl, right when she’s discovering these powers. She obviously can’t tell him about that, but it’s a beautiful comfort that he’s come back into her life right then and they’re able to support each other through it. It’s a really, really special love, and I’m very excited for the journey ahead for them.